1276: A Motivated Information Processing Perspective on Team Leaders’ Responses to Employee UPB (18882)

With the increasing scholarly attention on employee unethical pro-organizational behavior (UPB), we have gained rich knowledge about how leaders may impact employee UPB. However, much less is known about how employee UPB may impact a wide range of leader attitudes and behaviors. Building on the motivated information processing theory, the current study proposed that two important motivations in leaders’ self-regulation process (i.e., moral identity and promotion focus) may work as boundary conditions that influence leaders’ attention to the different aspects of employee UPB and their subsequent psychological and behavioral responses. Analyses of multi-wave, multi-source data from 84 work teams showed that when leaders’ moral identity is high, they would pay more attention to the unethical component of employee UPB, which leads to their distrust in teams and subsequent team monitoring behaviors. In contrast, when leaders’ promotion focus is high, their attention would be more directed to the pro-organizational component of employee UPB, which then results in their perceived team goal progress and team delegation behaviors. Our study contributes to a more nuanced understanding of leaders’ psychological and behavioral responses to employee UPB and highlights the value of the motivated information processing theory in understanding this process.

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